North West Leicestershire Labour group has claimed the District Council has missed out on a chance to benefit from the third round of the Government's Levelling Up fund.

Labour says this is a fund which has netted numerous other councils upwards of £20 million per project for regeneration.

However, council leader, Cllr Richard Blunt, says the claim is 'factually incorrect'.

Opposition Labour Group Leader, Sean Sheahan said: "The Tory-led administration might have been expecting to be invited to submit a bid for round three of Levelling Up. 

"Instead, they've had the door slammed in their face, because they didn't bother to bid in round two."

Government minister, Jacob Young, said it was not accepting new bids for Levelling Up round three, and would only be revisiting bids that were rejected in the second round.

Cllr Sheahan asked a question at the September 2022 Council meeting about what needed to change in order for a bid to go forward this year.

He says Cllr Blunt replied that the decision not to bid to round two, was for 'tactical' reasons.

One year on, Cllr Sheahan added: "This didn't make much sense at the time and now it just sounds pitiful. 

"It's increasingly clear that we have a council leadership wallowing in indifference. It's that which needs to change."

But Cllr Blunt has disputed the comments and said: "The claim from the Labour group is that we couldn't be bothered to bid to round two – this is factually incorrect.

"We were unable to bid to round two because of land ownership issues relating to HS2. 

"It would have been pointless to bid knowing we didn't meet the essential criteria. But at the time we believed that we would be able to bid to round three and had started preparing for that.

"As the government has changed the way it's managing the bids to the fund, we would suggest they look at robust round one bids as well as those from round two – like our excellent bid for Coalville. We would look to Labour to support us in that bid and play as a team – it's a much stronger position if all bids are supported by all political parties."